Ballroom: A Novel (7 page)

“Sure.”

“My Caddy is parked around the corner.” He makes certain that they pass the Queens crowd, his arm around her waist. Out of the corner of his eye he looks for Tony D, hoping he notices.

In the comfort of the black leather seats, driving up Park Avenue, Gabriel senses that Soo Young is relaxed. While he makes small talk, he keeps repeating her name to himself, smiling when he realizes that it sounds like “so young.”

“Why are you laughing?” she asks.

“Laughing? I was just thinking about meeting you. You make a man feel comfortable. Like he can really talk to you. Most women act as if they have a chip on their shoulders. How often do you go dancing? I haven’t seen you before.”

“I moved to New York recently. From Chicago,” she explains. “You’re really good, I noticed.”

“As I mentioned when we met, I’m looking for someone really special for my partner. Someone with style. That knows how to dress. We’d have to practice. I could make you into quite a dancer. That is, if you’re interested.”

“Oh, yes, I would definitely be interested. How often would we go dancing?”

“Several nights a week, and of course weekends. No performances, though. If you’re looking for that, I’m not your man.”

“Have you performed?” she asks.

“If that’s what you’re looking for, get yourself a dance instructor.”

He can’t believe his luck when he finds a parking space in front of her building.

“Here’s my card. If you’re interested, give me a call.”

“Oh, you sell diamonds?”

“Do you like diamonds?” Again he notices the hungry glint in her eyes.

She laughs.

“What do you do?” he asks.

“I’m on Wall Street.” She slips the card into her purse, hands him back one of hers. Stepping out of the car, he kisses her card before putting it in his breast pocket. She waits for him to open her door.

“I’d actually like to ask your advice about several investments I’m considering.” He takes her hand and walks her toward her building. “I’d love a cup of coffee before I drive home. I feel as though I might fall asleep at the wheel. Would you mind?”

Ladies are permitted to command the most unlimited services of their partners; but they should impose this task upon him in such a manner to make it delightful, rather than onerous.

                
—W. P. Hazard,
The Ball-Room Companion
, 1849

A
ngel loves Maria in red. Red dresses are a tradition in his family. Papa buys his mother one every year, which she wears on her birthday.

Papa bought her the first dress on her thirtieth birthday, when Angel was fourteen. With her burnished auburn hair done up in curls and her makeup brighter than usual, Sylvia Morez sat at the kitchen table, putting on her highest red sling-back heels. She stretched each leg to smooth her panty hose, boldly admiring them. She’d spent the day at Rosa’s Beauty Parlor. Papa gave her $100 so she could do her hair, a manicure and pedicure. He even told her to take a taxi both ways because it was her birthday.

“I have to sit very still until my party,” she said with a laugh, perched on the edge of the chair, “so I keep myself beautiful. You guys will have to do everything! My love slaves.” She buffed her nails against her low-cut dress.

Angel turned on the radio. Her head began to move from side to side to the beat of the song, like the baseball doll perched on the rear window of Papa’s car. Next, her bare shoulders, dusted with the sheerest glitter, rolled in wavelike motions while her elbows brushed against her slender waist in
one, two—one, two, three
time. Mama could never sit still when the music playing was a salsa.

Each finger was adorned with one of her collection of gold rings, and she wore the bracelets Papa had given her over the years. While making little pouty movements with her mouth, she bit into her lower lip. Everything about her was in syncopation with the music. It made Angel laugh. Papa winked at him.

She stopped for a moment and smiled. Her blushed cheeks were like high polished apples. As she stood up, patting the gardenia Julio brought for her to wear above her ear, her hips moved in one direction as her strapless top moved in another. Angel thought she was shaped like a graceful red vase.

“What are you both laughing at?” she asked. “Me? Come on, Julio, dance with me.” She stood, but not still. Papa moved one foot in time to the music and stirred his
café con leche
. Shaking his head, his father said, “Dance with your son, Mami. Fourteen years old, and he’s already the best dancer in the family.”

“Come, Angel, we’ll dance.” She beckoned with one finger.

As they danced, her face was flushed, her dark eyes flashed, and she laughed and laughed. Angel thought she was gorgeous for thirty. Julio tried very hard to look serious.

“You know, when I was young, I danced with the best dancers. On weekends, I could dance merengue all night,” she said.

The photo of his mother in the bamboo frame on their bedroom dresser was taken when she was a teenager at Luquillo Beach in Puerto Rico. Rather than a gardenia, she wore a hibiscus in her wavy black hair. Dressed in a sarong, her curves in all the right places, leaning against a palm tree, she looked like a movie star.

Dancing close to Julio and puckering her lips, she blew him a kiss across one open palm.

“I don’t know why I married your papa. He won’t dance. Not just with me. With nobody.” She complained about Julio, but everyone knew, especially Angel, that she adored her husband. “He knows how, I swear. He’s got great rhythm. Just won’t dance.”

Julio reached out to pinch her backside as she shimmied by, and he laughed too. Grabbing Julio’s hand, Sylvia tried to pull him out of his chair, but he just kept stirring his coffee.

“Look, Julio,” his mother called to her husband. “Look at our baby boy. Fourteen, and already he’s six-foot-two. With those dark eyes—he’s a lady-killer. Like you, Julio, before you got so fat. The dancing, he gets that from me.” She took Angel’s face in her hands, looked into his eyes. “
Dios te bendiga
. God bless you. I always bless you, even if you don’t ask,” she whispered. “The best, our Angel,” she said to Julio. “Is he gorgeous, or what?”

As the song ended, she slid onto a chair, breathless, arms gracefully outstretched to check that she hadn’t damaged her manicure.

“
Si, mi amor
.” Julio poured himself another coffee and added spoon after spoonful of sugar.

“Enough sugar.” She pushed the sugar bowl away. Laughing, she reached over to pat Julio’s stomach, and as he reached for a cookie, she smacked his hand.

“Always kind, respectful . . . and what a smile! Could light up a room, my mama used to say. She was crazy about you, Julio. You always made her laugh.”

Angel took two cookies, waiting for her to smack him, but of course she didn’t.

“Sylvia, your mama worked hard to take care of you,” Julio added.

“We were so poor,” she continued, “after my papa ran away with the cousin. Julio would walk me and my two brothers right to our classroom to make sure the boys went inside.” She hesitated, as though picturing it.

“After school, your papa helped me with my mathematics. I remember his notes, so careful and neat. When he finally asked Mama if he could marry me, he promised her that he would never let me work. I used to think that Mama was in love with him herself.”

Julio heaved a heavy sigh, put down the cup. “After we got married, and you were born, after ’Nam,” he said, “I came to New York to make money, to get a better job than anything I could find in Puerto Rico. I lived with Uncle Tito, in the Bronx, slept on his sofa. Got a good, steady job at Fischer’s Auto Parts. Mr. Fischer trusted me to do his books. Kept giving me raises. I worked hard to prove I was somebody.” His father sat up straighter, puffed up and proud. “In those days, if you were Puerto Rican, they thought you must be on welfare. I wanted to show them it isn’t true.”

Sylvia nodded approvingly, rubbing her hand on Julio’s back.

“Your papa, he helped Tito pay the rent and sent half his money to me. He worked very hard, but then he got very depressed from missing me and you. Couldn’t sleep or eat. He went to Mr. Fischer to ask him to lend the money to bring us to New York, so we could all be together. He promised his boss to make it up.”

“I did, too,” Julio insisted. “Paid back every penny. Worked so hard. Went to school nights. That’s why when Fischer retired five years ago, he turned the business over to me, because his own son is not as good a business person as me. And he isn’t interested in auto parts. He went to medical school.”

“Papa kept his promise to my mama. I never worked my whole life. He’s been a good provider. So what if he doesn’t want to dance?” Suddenly his mother snuggled onto her husband’s lap and, taking his hand, pressed his fingers to her lips. In her pointy red sling-backs, shiny red toenails peeking out, she kicked up her legs like a showgirl. “He still makes me laugh.”

T
hat was so many years before he danced with Maria for the first time at Our Lady of Sorrows, before he would consider falling in love with her. His father’s spoon stirring his coffee, salsa music playing, the rustle of his mother’s red satin dress, being enfolded in their laughter. Angel can still remember how, with her arms around his neck, Papa bent her back and gave her a big dramatic kiss, just like in the movies.

D
on’t you like the watch we bought you?” his father had asked. They were finishing dinner on a Sunday night, several weeks after his graduation from Washington Irving High School. “How come you never wear it? You’ll need it for college. To get to classes on time. Your mama and I want you to have a real good watch.”

“I’m not going to college,” Angel insisted. “Mike’s offered me full-time. I’m eighteen, I wanna work, make money, dance. I can’t go to college, work, and dance.” The Movado watch sat on the night table next to his bed from the end of June through August, ticking away the hours his family spent arguing about his future.

Even then, he was happy working full-time in the blueprint shop with people he liked and dancing at night. There was good money to be made escorting women to the Copacabana and other clubs. Though she tried not to say anything, he knew it worried his mother when he came home late.

“You and dancing—and those women.” She was sitting at the kitchen table, sewing the hem of her new birthday dress. Putting the dress down, she leaned over, taking his face in her hands.

“You got to get an education. Listen to me, Angel. Your father needs you in the business. Are you just going to spend your life in a blueprint shop?” she asked. “And dancing?”

“Times are different now.” Pushing his coffee mug around in circles, he understood what they wanted for him: to go to college, to study accounting. Sell automotive parts like his father. “I have to lead my own life, Mama. I know how you feel, but like I told you, I don’t sleep with women I escort. I’m not a gigolo. Think about it. If I fooled around with them, soon I’d have no business at all. It’s business. Strictly business.”

She leaned across the table to plant a kiss on his nose, like when he was a kid. He knew she loved him, no matter what.

H
e began to think about having his own place. By September, he’d saved enough money to put down a two-month deposit on a one-bedroom apartment on East Twenty-Second Street. His thoughts turned to planning and saving for the dance center and the future he wanted with Maria.

A gentleman, making a formal call in the morning or in the evening, must retain his hat in his hand. He may leave umbrella and cane in the hall, but not his hat and gloves. The fact of retaining hat indicates a formal call.

                
—Thomas E. Hill,
Evils of the Ball
, 1883

W
hen the new super, Manuel Rodriguez, moved into the first-floor apartment with his wife and infant almost twenty years ago, Harry had noticed right away that the building was cleaner. Burned-out bulbs were replaced; the smell of roach spray was gone from the hallways.

Harry was forty-five then, and still working at Simon’s Shoe Factory. When he came home after work, the seductive Mrs. Rodriguez, with her small waist and rounded hips, was always sitting on the front stoop. She spoke no English, but there was a wild, eager expression in her eyes when she looked at him. He knew that look; knew there could be trouble.

In the turquoise blue dress she often wore, with its frenzy of pink hibiscus, the perfect colors against her bronze skin, she reminded him of an exotic tropical island. The ruffles that fluttered around the hem accentuated her slender legs. He’d heard Manuel call her name, Vivianna, but he was careful to address her as Mrs. Rodriguez.

The infant on her lap often reached her small fists toward Harry. When he touched his hand to the child’s arm for the first time, he couldn’t help but release a small gasp. Never having touched a baby before, he was astounded at the velvet surface of her skin, the creases between her chubby cherub joints, and the delicacy of her fingers. Until then, Harry had never noticed children, but Maria was the most beautiful infant he’d ever seen. As he drew his hand away, Mrs. Rodriguez gazed up at him again with her languid eyes, and he wondered how soft
her
skin might be.

“
Entra la apartamenta
.” Manuel Rodriguez spoke sharply to his wife from the top step.

M
anuel went out on Friday nights at seven. One evening, soon after he’d left, Harry was on the second-floor landing on his way to Roseland when he heard the buzzer. An unfamiliar young man in a western hat with a turquoise band, fringed suede jacket, and cowboy boots slipped into the Rodriguez apartment. Harry was certain he could smell Tabu, Mrs. Rodriguez’s perfume, wafting up the stairs.

When Harry left the building, he crossed the street to the bodega to buy a newspaper. From the bodega window he could see the flicker of candlelight in the Rodriguezes’ apartment.